Wednesday 6 April 2016

Lies, Damned lies, and foreign investment.

So, it has been revealed by the Panama Papers that one foreign company is using a secret trust to hide approximately $150m dollars in investment in New Zealand. While Inland Revenue report that NZ$1.5b is being hidden by shell companies. Listening to the radio this morning, one DJ asked the question "If they are putting money into this country and creating more money why is it wrong?"

Firstly his question presents a false premise, the money added to the invested isn't emerging from a vacuum like energy from some Zero Point Module on Stargate. That money has already been created, and it is being drawn from the broad economy as fees, rents, interest payments. All the $150m is doing is capturing money like a magnet dropped in a box of paper clips. Over time, that fund may double, and eventually the investor will find an opportunity offering a better return rate, what happens then? They pull their investment and the collected returns, taking say $300m, leaving our country $150m down. And worst still they have not paid 1 cent in taxes here. They are freeloading on our nations good name and low corruption index, while 250,000 children live in poverty and thousands of Aucklanders are without a home. Mean while the minister for Revenue says "its not a problem" and the PM says it barking mad to describe New Zealand as a tax haven.
What being done? nothing obviously. What could be done, the world over we could and should tax all business activity in the country in which it occurs. Not where the corporation claims to be, Google is not an Irish Company unless you are reading their tax filings. It seems Corporations today are less patriotic than the fifth columnists of 80years ago.

This is just one of the many ways the 1% are bleeding this country and others dry. Now you can understand how parasitism really works in economics. Leaches and  flees invest anticoagulants so they can get a higher investment return. That is why they're bites itch so much.
The working people who may or may not be employed are the people who make the economy work, every dollar they get they put back into the community, as they buy food clothing, public transport, local body rates. This is much more of a commitment that the 1% who might spend as much as 5% of their income in the broad economy, occasionally buying a new luxury car, or penthouse.

Naturally there are those who say "go easy on the rich, they work to you know". Sure their nice offices, phone calls and stock trades over the internet really compare to the back breaking work of care giving the elder for minimum wage, burger flipping for long hours, or the black lung of coal miners. I get it, these poor billionaire are really struggling they don't even know where their next Concorde airliner is coming from.

This country is itching like a meth-addict after forty years of free-trade and foreign investment and still the Rentier in Chief John Key begs for more. Of course turkey never vote for Solstice feasts.


#smellEstablishmentDecomp and pass the Vaseline.

See also NZ Herald
   Daily Caller

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